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DUNEDIN, FLA.—Jose Reyes pulls down the collar of his Superman T-shirt to reveal a Superman tattoo just above his clavicle.

“I got it about a week before I came to spring training.”

He’s running out of skin canvas for ink artistry, true.

This tat also matches his Superman socks.

Reyes likes all superheroes — his locker is crammed with such character-embellished apparel — but he really digs Superman. “A hero, man.”

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Which is what the Blue Jays expect from their all-star shortstop this season: heroics.

There was truncated time for Reyes to flash his superpowers in 2013, with two and a half months missed due to a severely sprain left ankle. Barely out of the chute as a Jay before that injury was suffered on a gruesome encounter with second base in mid-April. Distant history, now.

The Florida batting average is meek at .212 but Reyes showed Thursday he’s starting to warm up at the plate — 2-for-3 with an RBI and one run scored before yielding to Ryan Goins. Nobody’s fretting about the leadoff Jay’s bat. And nobody’s worried about his splendour afield either, as Reyes has turned signature double-plays out there through 11 Grapefruit League games, as many appearances as any other Toronto positional starter, which should quell any immediate concerns about his injury-plagued durability.

He lives and dies by the double-play pivot and throw, gets more of a thrill out of that than reaching first safely. “Both feel good but when you do a double-play you help your team out, you help your pitcher out. Sometimes, you turn a big double-play in the seventh or eighth inning and that’s HUGE.”

The infield did Toronto’s pitchers no favours last year. As a team, the Jays were defensively brutal, racking up 111 errors. That won’t be repeated, Reyes vows. “We will try to eliminate that. It’s something we’re really focusing on at spring training. At this level, you can’t give the other team an extra out because those big-league players are going to take advantage of it, put runs up on the board. That’s something that hurt us the most last year.

“Good defence. Have to do it. Have to do it.”

And they have. Manager John Gibbons has been crowing about the defensive dazzle his team has exhibited thus far.

“We’ve played some really good defence and that’s the key,” he was saying Thursday. “Championship teams play good defence and we didn’t help our pitching staff out at all last year, especially early on. We couldn’t bail ’em out when they got in jams. We think we’ve tightened that up.”

Reyes has provided Toronto with that element, as anticipated, no worries there regardless of who he’ll have as a DP partner at second — Goins most likely. The real wow-golly, however, has been a resurrected Melky Cabrera — centre field in Thursday’s loss to Houston, such is the trust-of-range conferred upon him. That backup plan means Gibbons should feel comfortable about using Cabrera when Colby Rasmus needs a day off, or against tough left-handed pitching.

Said Gibbons: “He doesn’t necessarily run like most centre fielders but he’s got really good instincts. He doesn’t panic. He’s got great body control so he can make some great catches.”

Indeed, Cabrera has pulled off some dandy catches, sliding into the gap and leaping at the wall. He looks nothing like the galumphing gimp of a year ago, his motion restored by late-season surgery that removed a tumour from his spine.

Cabrera makes a circle with his thumb and index finger to indicate the size of the hole cut into his back. “Big scar.”

When given the shocking news that he had a tumour, Cabrera was terrified, thought he was going to die. The growth, fortunately, turned out to be benign.

“Everything is very good now, thanks be to God,” says Cabrera, who was 2-for-3 at the plate Thursday and is hitting .364.

“No pain anymore. My leg now is good for running, defence and hitting. I can play hard again.”

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